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NHL Lockout: Will frustrated sponsors warm up to hockey again?

The NHL's return gives sponsors a chance to profit from their marketing investment, but challenges remain in to tying your brand to the NHL

Calgary Flames' Cory Sarich, top, crashes into the Edmonton Oilers' Taylor Hall during first period NHL hockey game action in Edmonton on Friday, March 16, 2012. The NHL is most likely to play a 48-game season after its new collective bargaining agreement is ratified.Deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Canadian Press on Monday morning that it's looking "more and more" like that is the maximum number of games that can be fit in.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Ulan (John Ulan / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

If you think fans are glad to see the NHL lockout resolved, imagine how the league’s sponsors feel.

After 113 days without the NHL, corporations with cash tied up in NHL sponsorships will finally start seeing a return on their marketing investment.

But brand consultant David Kincaid says reaching consumers through an NHL sponsorship is much tougher than it was before the work stoppage. Research conducted by his firm, Level 5 Strategy, found the lockout had created a deep aversion among Canadian consumers toward the NHL.

He says the league and its sponsors need to focus on healing fans’ emotional wounds first.

“We had not seen (this) level of negative brand emotion since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico,” says Kinkaid, CEO of Level 5. “Each sponsor needs to understand the degree to which their target audience’s negative reaction is creating a start point for them. This could be a marketing case study for the ages.”

Sports business consultant Brian Cooper says sponsors are better off downplaying ties to the league and emphasizing relationships with teams.

While many fans will remain bitter toward the NHL, few can stay angry at their favourite teams.

“This is about re-engaging the passion of the game with the fans,” says Cooper, whose firm, S&E Sponsorship Group, works with NHL sponsors including Canadian Tire, Scotiabank and Sirius/XM. “The best thing sponsors can do is talk to the teams and the local markets about the players and about the game of hockey itself.”

NHL teams locked out players on Sept. 15, when owners and the players’ union couldn’t agree on a collective bargaining agreement. And for the next three months the sides remained in a stalemate about how to divide a growing pile of money – last season the NHL generated an all-time high $3.3 billion in revenue.

Meanwhile, some of the league’s most prominent sponsors have grown increasingly dissatisfied with the inaction on the ice.

In early November, Molson-Coors, which has a $375 million sponsorship deal with the NHL, said the work stoppage had noticeably hurt beer sales, and that the brewer would consider seeking compensation from the league.

Later that month Kraft scrapped its NHL-linked “Hockeyville” marketing initiative for a new program titled “Hockey Goes On,” which focused on rewarding youth leagues and volunteers.

That week Canadian Tire vice president of sponsorship Landon French told the Star the company had “moved on” from NHL-based advertising and marketing.

Without revealing whether it would revive NHL-centric marketing, Canadian Tire expressed satisfaction on Monday that the lockout had finally ended.

‘We remain committed to supporting hockey in communities across Canada,” said French in a statement emailed to the Star. “In the end we’re hockey fans and we are happy to see NHL players returning to the ice."

The danger, Kincaid says, is that the lockout might have shown companies how to circumvent the NHL, allowing them to market themselves through hockey but at a much lower price.

Cooper, meanwhile, points out that canceling the Winter Classic also eliminated the HBO 24/7 documentary series that would have accompanied it, dealing two huge blows to the NHL’s effort to remain relevant to fans in the U.S.

“A lot of the NHL’s crown jewel properties are missing from the calendar this year,” Cooper says. “This year is sort of a placeholder.”

Cooper says the NBA benefitted from pent-up demand from fans across the U.S., as well as built-in storylines like LeBron James’ quest for a championship, both of which helped lure a large audience for a condensed season.

While the NHL doesn’t have those advantages he says the league is positioned to grow its fan base and become more valuable for sponsors over the long term.

Correction: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the surname of David Kincaid.

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